Talking about bad weather while driving reminds me of a trip the wife and I took in December, 1990 to the west coast. We were on our honeymoon, a year removed from the wedding. After time in LA and the south part of California, we spent a few days in Vegas. The day we left to start home, it was very windy, no tornado though. The dust was kicking up so thick you couldn't even see the tops of buildings from the sidewalk. Anyway, we headed SE out of town on 93, planning to go over Hoover Dam toward Kingman, AZ. The wind was at our backs, and no kidding, I had to have my foot on the break to hold us at the 55 mph speed limit. We heard on the radio that several semi-rigs had been blown over on I-15 north of Vegas. The dam was pretty cool, but my wife wouldn't venture close to the edge to look over...she's terrified of heights. As we got to Kingman, it began to snow. We continued on I-40 to Williams, stopping there for the night with plans to go to the south rim of the Grand Canyon the next morning. When we woke up, it was still snowing with a foot on the ground already. Though I had confidence in my front-wheel drive car, I thought about getting chains for the tires, but they wanted way too much for them. So after breakfast we got on the road again. The road up to the south rim had not been cut yet so we sadly decided to forgo that sidetrip. I-40 east was snow covered, but passable if you drove slow and used common sense. So we just crept along at 15-20mph; my wife, who hates driving in any depth of snow, was pretty nervous so finally I just told her to bury her face in the pillow. Once, I hit a small drift that had blown across the road and plowed right through it. A small compact car behind me wasn't so lucky; it got pulled into the ditch. We made it through Flagstaff and got almost to the AZ/NM border when they announced on the radio that I-40 was being closed behind us. By then, we were getting ahead of the storm and the road was becoming clearer. It was tense most of the way, but eventually we made it home, and without incident. That's a trip I will never forget.
